audio at last.

In order to celebrate the arrival of No. 8056 I had taken the liberty of ordering a couple of condenser mics before it arrived. This evening I was finally able to set them up. Record something. Weird listening to the result. The only time I've recorded a piano was maybe twelve-plus years ago on digital videotape which I transferred to an audio cassette now old and scratchy-sounding full of hiss.

So it's weird.

Weird listening to a recording of my piano that sounds exactly like my piano. I squeezed the mics in over the strings. Adjusted the gain just below clipping. Inserted a touch of reverb and EQ and played something simple.

I'm not sure what it is about microphones and recording but they and it are just cool. Up until now Logic and its piano samples were my way of capturing ideas usually late late at night. But now ... now I will be able to record the Bechstein.

Awesome.

studio update.

Not sure how it came to be but back around the end of 2008 I decided quite matter-of-factly that I was going to invest in a way to record my music. Not sure how I landed so matter-of-factly on Logic Pro but I don't remember it taking long. Maybe cos I work on Macs. I remember being surprised I could pick up a copy of (at the time) one version back for around a hundred and fifty. A whole recording studio more or less for a hundred and fifty bucks. Cool.

And then I got lucky finding a controller. I went into Guitar Center to take a look at the one I had in mind and discovered a much nicer one in their used section (had a scratch but who cares) for the same price so I grabbed it. I also remember having a fun time trying to carry this sixty or seventy pound keyboard out the store and opening the door (it was a little awkward) while two dudes that worked there sat and watched me have a hard time. Sigh. Guitar Center sucks but whatever. I make a point not to frequent it, and less of a point of ever actually buying anything from them.

Anyway.

So with a pretty sweet controller tossed on top of the Bechstein and Logic installed on my aging but still rocking G4 dual 1 gig, I grabbed a little desk from Ikea that sorta worked and plopped it in the corner of my living room behind the Bechstein and set up shop -

It worked. Kind of. But as I recorded more and learned Logic more it got old standing to play the keyboard. And not being able to reach the top octave and a half or so on the Bechstein cos the desk was kind of in the way. And having to look sideways while recording. And having all that stuff on top of my piano. And so on.

So I scrawled out a wishlist for this year. Another 23-inch Apple Cinema Display so I can see even more of my arrangements. Bigger near-field monitors (it's amazing though what even sitting and, well, actually facing the ones I have is and how much better that sounds - yeah, I know - brilliant). And a burlier computer since my trusty G4 was showing its age.

So I scored a five-ish-year-old G5 (not the one I wanted, which would be the dual quad-core two-and-a-half-gig monster) but for next to nothing and it seems to do the trick for now. And then set out to find a keyboard stand or desk that would suit my workstation needs. So (sigh) I headed back to Guitar Center to check out what they had (before ordering from somewhere cheaper online of course) and it was while roaming through their stuff that I realized hey - I could make a double keyboard rack work by just leveling the top tier and using a shelf from Lowes I already had set across the supports. Done.

The next complication was finding a stand that put the height of my keyboard as close as possible to the height of the Bechstein so I could just swivel between the two. Apparently they don't really make stands to be played at while sitting as in - like - on a piano bench. But moving past the too-tall X-type stands and onto the (thankfully even beefier, according to the reviews) Z-type stands - there were two options and I found a screaming deal online at Musician's Friend for one under a hundred bucks. So it's now in my living room corner -

At its lowest height it puts my controller's key tops about an inch higher than the Bechstein's. I can live with that. Next - those bigger monitors (either KRK or M-Audio - the KRKs sound flatter which is perfect for mixing, while the M-Audios have a bit fatter bass and treble which sounds better for sound reinforcement while playing ... ). They'll probably need to go on stands but I already have a pair picked out. And that second display.

And to keep working on this next arrangement ...






cheers

upgrade #1.

So with the recording and mixdown of Ferocity And Fragility it became painfully clear my trusty 1.0Ghz dual G4 - my first Mac and the one that has been my Trusted One - was spent. Well, not entirely spent. But not up to the task of thirty-plus Logic tracks all loaded down with effects and such. And I really want to move on from the supplied Logic samples to much better ones for piano (namely, a particular Bechstein sample I have in mind) and orchestra (and possibly symphonic choir) which require significantly more CPU and RAM. Significantly. They are enormous.

So an upgrade to The Studio was in order. Namely, a beefier Mac and bigger monitors (to come soon) to properly monitor and mixdown.

This is not the one I really have my sights on (which is the G5 2.5Ghz quad core - read EIGHT processors on four chips loaded with 16GB of RAM) but I could not pass it up and hopefully it will work in the meantime -

A 2.0GHz dual processor with 2.5 gigs of RAM that I will upgrade to eight gigs if it passes the test ... which is to run through F&F without having to freeze every track (the test will be to leave all of the non-piano sample tracks unfrozen while at the same time being able to leave at least one of the, uhh, three piano samples running unfrozen and ready for editing).

So time to pick another element from the periodic table in which to name it and to properly add it to the family ... And I still will likely get that G5 quad monster in the near future but without loss of this one - I can enable Logic's node capabilities and use its two processors over the LAN to help with the computing.

...

Oh, and Uranium passed the test (all tracks unfrozen CPUs operating below redline with some headroom even to spare) -

And without fail I am working on another song project incorporating more instrumentation and orchestration to be uploaded when it is finished (or as a sample beforehand once it is at least a bit further along).

cheers

mastering.

So I originally got this dual 1.0GHz PowerMac G4 I call Carbon, what ... seven years ago or something? So I could learn InDesign and Photoshop. It came pre-installed - Photoshop 7 and InDesign 2. The Apple 17" Studio LCD monitor is now the proud display for my 800MHz PowerMac G4 server I call Iridium (the minimum G4 CPU that boasts gigabit ethernet). Upgraded last year to a 23" Apple Cinema so I could have some more screen real estate for Logic (should have gotten the 30"). Done with Photoshop and InDesign. They aren't even loaded on Carbon, kept lean with minimal apps (OS 10.4.11 is enough of a resource hog) to keep Logic humming with twenty-plus instrument tracks, busses, masters and such.

And so tonight, a new art ... mastering.

The subject is that minute-forty I posted a couple weeks ago (even though I have continued working on the multi-track adding more and more music to it but have not yet bounced that down to two tracks). Brought in the two-track mixdown and then bussed in an adaptive limiter on top of a multi-band compressor to the stereo instrument track then some linear EQ on top followed up with a second adaptive limiter to eke out just a little more headroom to the master channel. Just trying to bring up the noise floor and dynamic range. Awesome. Called up the spectrum analyzer to check out the frequency range as I looped the loud intro and the quieter middle. Over and over. Add a multimeter to really check out the frequency distribution. And Logic of course lets me save all of my plug-in settings so when I ultimately finish the song I can re-apply all of them to that new mastering session. Maybe tweak them a bit more.

This G4 never fails to amaze. Neither does Logic. Seriously. I get made fun of periodically for my older Macs and my three-versions-ago software. Whatever. I keep my machines lean and mean. The fact I bought this piece of software on Ebay for something like a hundred-forty and it is seriously a recording studio inside of my Mac is incredible. This particular song is definitely taxing that very Mac, but I am making sure to run the Onyx cleanups and keeping it at peak performance. Have to go in and periodically freeze tracks but all is well.

Hmm ... now I would like some bigger monitors. Yes, definitely. The key to mastering is listening on lots of different speaker sets. Headphones. In the car. Little speakers. Big speakers. But it is decidingly difficult trying to master on little M-Audio 4" monitors. They're good, but not that good.

Soon.

template.

So after a couple of months of getting up to speed in Logic, I finally sat down tonight to put together a master template file that includes a drum kit, piano, bass, guitar and a synth – all setup and leveled and panned and effected ready to record. This will be my first real stab at serious multi-track work with my G4 and – as is apparent in the screenshot – the CPU meter for one of the processors hovers at around the 50% mark even when idling and then revs to overdrive when I play the grand piano sample (all other samplers do not invoke the same CPU-melting power evidently) so I may have to record the piano track(s) in a separate file and then copy them into this template (assuming they will play back, but tracks already recorded can be frozen or bounced to help out the CPUs). I will also test this on my Powerbook to see if the results are any better (only one CPU but 50% faster).

core audio.

So tonight I was mixing one of the first tracks I recorded in Logic and kept getting the audio overload. Hmm, so I froze the bulk of the tracks which freed up 90% of my system resources (BTW, Activity Monitor on a Mac is wonderful though Logic also has its own CPU and disk I/O meters) and all was well, but ... I was still curious as I have other songs with loads more tracks and do not get an audio error so I took a peek at the Audio Object layer in the Environment to find (much to my surprise) – forty-eight instrument tracks, two aux sends, eight busses, and two master objects (monitor and fader). Most of them obviously unused on this arrangement, but that was the default setup for Logic when I first installed it and I had not tweaked it yet before tracking this song.

Fortunately, Logic provides an easy way to select all unused objects and delete them which is what I promptly did. But admittedly it looked really cool with a screen full of faders.

core audio: system overload.

system = G4 1.0GHz x 2 PowerPC 1.5GB RAM

After two days, I am at a standstill. I will strip out a few more things from the system, and limit processing to a few instrument tracks without running any effects which is not very much fun but at least until I can figure out next steps. Perhaps it is time to step up to a 2.0GHz+ x 2 G5 PowerPC machine or even an Intel box running only Logic and relegate this G4 to running pithy applications like Photoshop and InDesign and Mail and Safari.

I am still trying to figure out an overall system scheme that includes a server that is always on that has our music on it (so we can access it anywhere including the Xbox to play it through our audio system) but also picture files, documents, etc. etc. and then something that is screaming fast that includes multiple drives for effects files and sample files for Logic and I thought again of the G3 sitting in the basement that could play media server once configured with a bigger drive that then backs up to say its own USB 2.0 or Firewire drive on a schedule (this could even have all our documents on it too and we could access mounting via AFP) then (and this is wishful thinking) a new G5 or Mac Pro running Logic with either multiple internal SATA drives backed up to its own Firewire or internal drives setup as RAID-1 mirroring within Disk Utility but the point being that machine and its backup would only be for audio files while the G3 server would serve up everything else. Julian would still have his G4 iMac and this G4 would be used for Photoshop work. As long as this is wishful thinking, I could try selling this G4 which would possibly net me a few hundred clams and then I would get a G4 iBook (1.0 or 1.25Ghz why not?) to use as a webbook to sit on the couch and surf the web and do email for which I would set up a wi-fi router hidden somewhere in the living room or maybe just in the media closet once it is all assembled and then also when plugged into a monitor to run Photoshop and InDesign and such and it would be reading/writing to the (possibly G3) server as stated would be backed up by an external drive.

Hmm. Jeff says I have reached nerdvana. He also said there are hundreds of networking options it is just a matter of finding which one suits your needs. My initial thought is I think this would work. And yes I totally realize this entire post was completely pointless to anyone besides myself more like me instead of talking typing to myself which I suppose pretty much describes this entire blog so there you have it system possibilities and overloads and all.

logic.

Installed here running a Yamaha grand sample with some space designer reverb. Much to learn, although we have already discovered a sample that Enigma used from the Logic library on Seven Lives Many Faces.

ps – apparently running a stereo channel with the space designer reverb set to the 'old plate' parameter and the grand piano sample is already maxing out my dual CPUs and causing a bit of breaking up in the signal so must switch to a mono channel.

logic pro.

Sweet, thanks to the help of Gixen which sniped this for me while I was away in meetings, I now look forward to receiving and diving into Apple's Logic Pro 7. This is seemingly quite the complex DAW but I am looking forward to the challenge of learning multi-track recording and MIDI sequencing on my Mac. I picked up a v6.0 book at a used bookstore a little over a week ago and am just getting into it. It appears that the power of Logic is quite immense, and the number of incredible instruments is vast. There is a plug-in that replicates a Fender Rhodes (think Portishead's song 'Roads' and I suppose that may not be a coincidence) as well as the just-as-infamous Hammond B3 complete with Leslie. Granted, not the same as the real instruments but will be fun to play with. I miss sitting in front of a ginormous mixing console with a million knobs and faders sculpting soundwaves. Logic Pro will not be the same but this is not the point and for its point I believe it will do nicely. It is massive.

So strike two from the wishlist (strike one was the M-Audio controller I bought a while back). And the third strike will be the M-Audio studio monitors I just ordered and are apparently already shipping via FedEx.